I love eavesdropping on strangers’ conversations. What makes them laugh, what makes them sad, what could I potentially talk to them about? It’s a glimpse into the lives of people I will never know, but see so intimately, through snippets of giggles and hushed secrets.

A year ago, I started working at a job that required me to commute by metro for an hour. At first, I listened to music and podcasts, but forgetting my earphones one day introduced me to the glorious world of fleeting conversations. It was like tuning into a podcast, without knowing the hosts or the context. It was, of course, a blatant invasion of privacy, but public spaces in India are a blatant invasion of privacy. If we are close enough for my face to be in your armpit, or your hair up my nose, we are close enough for me to listen to your conversations.

One such conversation that stayed with me was among a group of girls, headed back home from MG Road after a night out. As they stumbled onto the train, drunk and loud, everyone was annoyed, tired after a long day of work. It was a Tuesday, after all. But there was such a glow around them. Drunk laughter travels faster than sober laughter, and it didn’t take long to reach me. I didn’t know these girls; they didn’t know me, but I still felt a connection, a surge of familiarity, a desire to be a part of whatever was making them howl with laughter. So I turned off my music and scooted closer.

They were translating dirty talk into their native language.

“Touch me” became “Nannana muttu”. “I want you” became “Main tujhe chahta hu”.

Of course, it got a lot more explicit than that, but you get the point. It’s awkward to flirt or have sex when it’s in any language other than English. I thought it was funny too. I had to hold back my laughter as they kept making literal translations of increasingly explicit statements. It’s a conversation I have had often with my friends, about how sex becomes a comedy when it’s in our languages. What seems smooth in English becomes a staccato of embarrassed laughter and stutters when translated.

But that got me thinking: why is it so? Among urban, English-speaking people I know, this appears to be the norm. Dirty talk happens in English. Sex happens in English. Desire in our mother tongues is a punchline to intimacy.

I thought it could be because English creates an emotional distance. It’s easy to say Daddy in a language you didn’t learn to say Appa in. But that’s not the entire story.

The obvious explanation, of course, is colonialism. Intimacy didn’t exist in a vacuum. India gave us the Kamasutra; the Gita Govinda; entire traditions of erotic literature, philosophy, and sculpture, in our own languages. People were having sex in their languages before colonialism, and people continue to do so after. The act never changed, but its perception did. The colonisers left, but their language and morality stayed behind. Indigenous sexual vocabulary became vulgar, and English gained prestige and became the face of sanitised intimacy. 

I saw a tweet the other day that said, “People who use ‘didn’t knew’ in a sentence give me the ick.” People in the replies agreed, gave more examples, and it all served as a reminder that desire is not separate from power. The ick was never about grammar. It was about who’s desirable. English used to be the language of the clerk, then the officer, the aspirant and then more. It was a ticket to an aspirational life, one where you weren’t the subjugated but the one subjugating. Seventy-odd years later, English also feels like the ticket to the bedroom. 

Attraction doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It absorbs the hierarchies around it. The language we find attractive is the language we have been taught to respect. The prestige that English carries in urban India shapes our dating preferences. The language associated with power is inherently associated with desire and sexuality.

Dirty talk is not taught in schools. But most of us know the vocabulary before we ever perform it. We borrow scripts from films, from porn, from fan fiction. And all these scripts, for urban Indians, are overwhelmingly in English. The language in which we first encounter sexuality becomes the language in which we perform it. And after all, what is sex but a performance? I learnt lines from fan fiction, choreography from porn, and delivery through films. I practised sex long before ever performing it, and I only ever practised in English, so English became the language of my sexual imagination.

By comparison, Indian media is eclipsed by the shadow of censorship. Desire is implied behind songs, or closed doors, or metaphors, or the two sunflowers kissing. Sex exists, but it’s rarely spoken about. The state censors, claiming to protect our culture, and what our culture apparently needs protection from is desire. The same culture that has produced some of the most nuanced exploration of desire now makes movies that feature more punches than kisses. 

Sure, our media is censored, and most porn sites are banned, but despite that, many porn sites rank among India’s most visited, and the country ranks high for estimated traffic on many porn sites as well. Porn is a part of our culture, but we can hardly watch it in our languages. The shame is not in the act, but in the language it’s performed in.

I did an extremely narrow and biased survey, by which I mean I spoke to some friends and co-workers. None of them ever watch porn in Hindi, Kannada, Bengali or Marathi. No one knows exactly why. They said the camera quality is bad; it sounds vulgar, dirtier somehow. In one instance, someone said it sounded chappri - a slur aimed at entire sections of society that does a lot of heavy lifting in a single syllable.

Native sexual language triggers a different kind of discomfort - not of arousal, but of wanting something in a voice too close to home. Native sexual vocabulary is associated with vulgarity and being lower, which is exactly what the slur does. I have also been guilty of only choosing people who speak English; their fluency reads as permission. Words like “consent” and “pleasure” assure me when spoken in English, as though those words do not exist in Kannada or Hindi. English is a signifier for people like us, and I want to be with people like me. People, I assume, are progressive, liberal, educated, and open-minded, though fluency of language never guarantees me any of these. 

There is truth in this entire story. But I think my discomfort is not explained yet. My discomfort is the weight of what this language means to me. All my lessons about being a woman arrived to me in Kannada and Hindi. The native language of my childhood was the language of instructions, the culture that told me to cross my legs when sitting, to cover myself, to not talk so fast, or so rudely, to not attract attention.

It was in Kannada I was told to change my top because it was too tight-fitting. It was in Hindi I was told not to duck too low while serving food, because my neckline dips. It was in my native languages I was told that my sexuality was not mine to own, but to guard. I knew what desire meant, but only as a threat.What allowed me to imagine myself as a sexual being came through English. Feminist writing, discourse about consent, discussions of pleasure and anatomy, my agency and autonomy were all in English. Filthy writing, women expressing desire, and female sexuality in its rawest form were all in English.

So, when I have sex, I have it in English. And with people who speak English. When I translate desire into my mother tongue, I am forced to confront all the baggage that comes with it. The language is crowded with voices that have nothing to do with sex. I don’t want my sexuality to exist solely beyond the language that raised me. I don’t want to separate some languages with shame, and some with desire. I want them to coexist. I want to be the same adult expressing sexual needs as the kid I was expressing my basic needs. I want to connect with my native language. I want to create resistance against the distance it created.

Looking back, it’s funny how a joke you’re not even a part of leads to an interrogation of how much our identities are tied to things hardly in our control. In a way, me overhearing this conversation was hardly in my control, but the linguistic and class analysis that followed was. I am glad I explored these questions. And I hope the girls in the metro can also explore their languages as more than a punchline after a night of drunken fun.